Dripping, Juice stepped out of the water. With a grin he watched Dana, who was lying in the exact same position as when he had waded into the sea twenty minutes ago. Was she sleeping? It was a mystery how else she managed to still lay there. Not only because the sun was lethally hot, also because he just couldn't lay on a towel for more than ten minutes doing nothing. Every now and then he stood up to walk along the beach, or go swimming, and a few days ago he had even built a sand castle of which he was secretly really proud. He had even opened a book for the first time since high school, one of Stephen King's works that was recently made into a movie and which Dana had scored somewhere for a song.
The sand beneath his feet felt warm as he walked back to Dana. When he blocked the sun light, she still wasn't responding. Even though he couldn't see if her eyes were closed because she was on her stomach, her face buried in her crossed arms, he knew she was sleeping. He lowered himself on top of her and smothered a laugh against her shoulder as she shuddered, giving a little scream. His swim shorts stuck to the back of her thighs and the heated skin of her back tingled underneath his still wet upper body. Another shiver went through Dana while she tried to turn around cursing, but the vibration in her voice gave a way she wasn't really mad.
"You looked like you could use something to cool off," he chuckled. With his hand he wiped her hair across her left shoulder. The muscles in her back tensed as he pressed kisses on the crook of her neck. So close to her hair he could smell the shampoo that she had used to wash her hair this morning, mixed with the scent of sunburn and sweat. With his knees resting in the sand next to her hips so he wouldn't crush her, she raised herself a bit on her elbow. He shoved his hand around her left breast, kneading it while sucking and kissing the skin of her neck.
"Fuck Juice, you promised me not to do that anymore," she muttered. "Soon..."
"Nobody's looking at us," he whispered, even though he had no idea if that was true. He couldn't care less.
Her breathing sped up, automatically he moved his waist along her butt. There were only two tiny, soaking wet pieces of fabric between them. Although she had raised protests a minute ago, her body clearly disagreed; her muscles tensed and her ass scraped along his crotch.
Juice closed his eyes to focus, to move his thoughts away from the thing he wanted to do with her now. He bent his waist away from her so he wasn't fully driving himself crazy and dotted kisses from her neck, along her spine until he reached her bikini bottom. He took a deep breath, reluctantly admitting he should leave it at that on this beach. It wasn't crowded, but they weren't anywhere near alone.
Dana turned around and looked at him. With her left hand she pulled back her top. Despite her protests disappointment had filled her eyes. "You can't – do something like that and then just stop."
Smirking, he placed his hand against her lower leg, shoving it upwards, across her knee pit to her groin. "Let's find a more private place then." Wriggling his eyebrows, he let his tongue slip along his lip.
Before she could answer, a melody came out of his backpack. Immediately the excitement died away, that was quickly replaced by a gnawing feeling in his stomach. It had been a long time since he had heard something from Charming; Kozik had said it was better to keep their contact to a minimum. There was a chance their friend just wanted to make sure they were still all right, but his fingers were shaking as he opened the bag and grabbed for the burner. His throat felt dry as he held the device close to his face, seeing the unknown number.
His first instinct was to ignore it, but he knew it would never give him peace while Kozik could easily have destroyed his former device and bought a new one.
He pressed the green button and took the call. "Yeah?"
First he could only hear sobs, which squeezed his throat. A shiver crept down his spine.
"Juice – sorry I... Kip and me are done, we left on really bad terms and I got nowhere to go. Dana is my only friend... And Kozik said I should take a plane to Mexico and call this number."
"Oh..." Juice didn't know what to say, he was just overwhelmed to hear Cherry's voice after half a year. "Where are you now?"
"I took a plane to the airport of Cancún. I'm in a hotel now."
Juice ran a hand across his head, sighing. He looked at Dana, who stared at him with wide eyes. He doubted she understood what this talk was about, Cherry sounded really upset.
"I'll pick you up. Okay? You wanna talk to Dane?"
Again Cherry started to cry and a little awkwardly Juice listened to it, until Dana pulled the phone out of his hand.
"What's goin' on?" she asked with a cracked voice.
The tensed expression on her face became a little softer as Cherry repeated her story, still sobbing. Juice squeezed Dana's shoulder and started to gather their things.